Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, says companies are fueling fears of AI posing an existential threat to humanity to weed out the competition.

One of the leading concerns regarding AI development is that it could eventually turn on humanity and wipe it out. According to Insider, Ng believes those fears are not only overblown, but intentionally fanned by companies looking to keep competitors — especially open source — from moving forward with development.

“There are definitely large tech companies that would rather not have to try to compete with open source, so they’re creating fear of AI leading to human extinction,” he told The Australian Financial Review. “It’s been a weapon for lobbyists to argue for legislation that would be very damaging to the open-source community.”

If Ng is correct, the strategy could be one of the biggest threats to open source development in years.